


Saint Bernard

by junee_bee



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: AU, Comforting Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Good Omens (TV) - Freeform, I spent way too long on this, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Pre-Fall (Good Omens), Snake Crowley (Good Omens), i forgot how to use tags on here good grief, planning on tweeting it to michael sheen Just Fer Laffs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 10:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19926517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junee_bee/pseuds/junee_bee
Summary: Crowley the demon isn't exactly what you'd call an open book. There are parts of him that he is ashamed of, and things in his history that he wants to keep buried. He doesn't talk about them, and Aziraphale doesn't ask, not even after they're officially a couple. So it has been for the past 6,000 years. But Crowley can't keep secrets from his angel forever--sooner or later, he'll make a mistake and be forced to do something far scarier than spending an eternity in Hell: talk about his past.*Please read the notes at the beginning of the story! :)





	1. Parrhesia

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Raphael!Crowley fic inspired by the headcanons on @retrouvel's Tumblr blog. Go check them out if you want to be sadder about Crowley than you probably already are.
> 
> In chapter 2 there are fairly graphic descriptions of self-harm, pain (physical and emotional), and bodily harm/severe injury/etc. If you're sensitive to that type of content, please read with caution!
> 
> Michael Sheen, if you're reading this, thank you and I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Everyone else reading this--thank YOU, and I hope you enjoy it as well!

* * *

**Parrhesia,** _Greek_ : speaking unreservedly or candidly; the obligation to speak as such.

* * *

Crowley claimed that it had been more of a saunter than a fall.

But that was a lie.

The thing was, the sauntering version of the story gave him a feeling of control. It supported his facade of being nonchalant and collected, always cool about everything. _Yeah, Falling, it was no big deal, really. Just a light jaunt, you know how it is. A Sunday stroll._ Not like he told the story of his fall much, but the few times he had he just used that snazzy line about sauntering or some variant thereof and ended the conversation as abruptly as he could. The truth struck a chord inside him that he didn’t like and which didn’t mesh with the version of himself he projected—the version of himself that he wanted to be for Aziraphale, because Aziraphale wouldn’t like the truth. 

Crowley _did_ suspect that Aziraphale didn’t fully believe him. But then again, Aziraphale tended to make funny faces on a regular basis, so maybe That Look paired with the story Crowley told was just a coincidence and he was being paranoid. Regardless, Aziraphale had never confronted Crowley once about it in 6,000 years. The few times it had cropped up in conversation, he accepted Crowley’s move of shutting it down without protest. No sense making a fuss over something that happened millennia ago, he supposed.

Crowley was a rarity amongst demons in that he held in his possession an artefact from his Fall. Most demons eventually embraced their new and hated nature, shedding any and all evidence of their angelic pasts. But not Anthony J. Crowley. No, those first few days—well, maybe months—well, maybe years after his Fall had hit him hard. He was not a demon; this new body did not belong to him. He bore scars from those first years, both self-inflicted and not, delineating the curvature of the muscles in his shoulders and back and chest. Some were tiny and barely noticeable; others were stare-worthy in their length and jaggedness, the way you could just tell by looking at them that they still ached in the earliest hours of the morning. The ones marring his back were from the Fall. The ones near his heart were done by his own hand. Crowley could have miracled all of them away without a problem, but something about doing so felt Wrong with a capital W. He’d come close a few times over the centuries; of course he had. But he could never build up the willpower to do it. The scars reminded him of what he was, deep down somewhere in the pit of his stomach. Getting rid of them...no matter how much the better part of him wanted to, he couldn’t toss away his past like that.

He just couldn’t.

So he resigned himself to never being shirtless around anyone with eyes (and, for good measure, anyone _without_ eyes, too). Nothing to look at meant no questions meant his carefully-crafted image was safely preserved. It was the same reason he wore his sunglasses: he could not expose his real self to the world. Not that _this_ (gesturing generally to Crowley, crimson-haired head to black-leather-shoe-encapsulated toe) was his real self, per se, but...it was symbolism, all elaborate wrought-iron gates he’d erected around himself for protection. Never shirtless, sunglasses everywhere, remain unaffected by his Fall as much as possible. These were the rules that Crowley set for himself and which he lived his life by, without exception. It worked; it really did.

And then he started to drop the glasses around Aziraphale, because Aziraphale had been the first to look at his eyes in a way that didn’t make him hate himself: with gentle fascination and then, rather quickly, awe and admiration. It shocked Crowley anew every time the angel ( _his_ angel, _his angel!_ , demons are possessive creatures but _his angel_ , he didn’t think he’d ever get over it) made eye contact with him. Aziraphale’s eyes were hazel, a brilliant blend of browns and greens that looked different but just as stunning every day depending on the light and the angle of viewing. His eyes betrayed him: Crowley couldn’t count the number of times they had argued and then moments later he’d caught a glance from Aziraphale that told him just how much love was held for him in that heart. His eyes were what Crowley had fallen in love with first, what he’d noticed in the Garden. His eyes _were him_ in the same way that Crowley’s were _not him_. But when Aziraphale looked at those sulfuric, slit-pupiled eyes, there was no revulsion or fear. There never had been, not even when they had first met. Just Aziraphale as a fixed point of love around which Crowley orbited fitfully, a planet whose surface of smooth, solid ice hid tempestuous and uncertain seas. It was because Aziraphale loved him, and he was certain of it, the first thing he’d...ever...been certain about, that he stopped wearing his sunglasses around him.

It was a perfect storm, really.

The days after Armageddidn’t stretched into weeks which uncurled into months. And they were happy months, certainly, the happiest Crowley had experienced in a _very_ long time. He felt comfortable around Aziraphale without question, but he did not feel comfortable around himself. Nevertheless, he found himself getting careless. He discarded his glasses the second he walked in the door of A.Z. Fell & Co. and almost forgot to put them back on before he left, more than once. He started to unlock a (curated) few of the gates he’d put up, bit by bit, for Aziraphale. It was so easy to do now, with all this time on their hands, with the certainty that they were going to be all right, with his angel’s kind gaze resting upon him.

So he was shirtless. Once. Not because of physical desires or a need to show off, just because he was hot and Aziraphale would _not_ turn the air conditioning on. It was August. It was boiling and humid. And Crowley, well aware of the irony, did not like the heat. He was only cold-blooded as a serpent, a form he hadn’t assumed in at least three thousand years. In this shape, in all-black silk and wool, he was positively miserable. So he took off his shirt. Just to cool down. A last-ditch effort, something he hadn’t even been thinking about.

Aziraphale was reclining on a couch opposite Crowley’s, thumbing through a first-edition copy of the Gutenberg Bible, when it happened. They had been sitting in companionable silence when Crowley, without warning, began wrestling with his clothing. The grunts and huffs of struggle were what made Aziraphale look up from his book, a small smile of amusement on his face. Crowley had, apparently, chosen to forego undoing buttons and to try instead to lift his ebony silk blouse over his head, an action which immediately proved to be quite futile. It exposed his torso quite brilliantly, and Aziraphale would have had no complaints about this except for the fact that Crowley’s skin was absolutely covered in some rather dramatic scars.

His smile faded when he saw them.

They were _everywhere_ , of such an alarming variety of sizes and in such great quantity that Aziraphale was almost, morbidly, impressed. Some of them were mere centimeters in length. Others crawled like horrid vines across his flesh. Aziraphale went nearly slack-jawed as he watched, gaze transfixed on his demon’s marred chest. After a few moments of struggle, Crowley dropped his shirt back over his torso with a huff and began to fuss with the buttons.

Time yawned and stretched as Crowley, who really preferred zippers, undid the first button. Then the second, then the third. The shirt peeled away, once again revealing, bit by bit, the scars. Aziraphale had thought maybe he’d been seeing things, but no: there they were. He felt sick in a way only angels could. Fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh button. Crowley did not notice Aziraphale staring. Eighth button, and Crowley wriggled out of the sleeves as fast as he could, tossed the shirt away, and laid down on the couch with another dramatic huff, eyes shut. “Angel,” he said with a playful whine in his voice, “look what you’ve made me _do_ . It’s not like you have to pay the bills, would it _really_ have _killed you_ to turn on some A/C? For me? Your favorite and only demon?”

Aziraphale did not reply. He _couldn’t_. He tried to, but the words just jammed in his throat. He couldn’t take his eyes off those scars. “Angel?” Crowley asked, suddenly realizing that something was wrong. “Aziraphale? What is it?”

He opened his eyes. Turned his head towards Aziraphale. And knew.

It was the first time Aziraphale had looked upon him with any emotion that could be considered at all “negative.” Well, it wasn’t _really_ “negative,” to be fair. There was a good amount of concern in the expression that so suddenly landed upon his face. Shock, absolutely. Confusion, definitely. And not _fear,_ really, but a feeling that approached the territory, perhaps the sudden realization that Crowley was indeed capable of inflicting lasting physical damage to something living, houseplants excluded. The scars were just _there_ , almost obscene when placed atop the background of Crowley’s otherwise flawless skin, a Sharpie mustache drawn on a Monet.

Comedic in the sheer wrongness of it.

For a second, Crowley considered putting his shirt on as fast as he could, but that would just be stupid—Aziraphale had seen his scars already. He considered wiping Aziraphale’s memory but didn’t know if that would work on an angel and the thought of doing that to him immediately made Crowley feel awful. He almost miracled them away, after all this time, knowing that losing the scars would be infinitely preferable if it meant he wouldn’t lose Aziraphale. But after he exhausted those options, his mind went blank.

“Angel?” he tried again, weaker. Aziraphale was just...staring. There was some emotion twisting in those hazel eyes that Crowley loved so much, some emotion that Crowley had never seen before on Aziraphale’s face. _Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid_ , Crowley thought. His world, the image of himself he had spent so much time building and maintaining, Aziraphale’s undying love for him, everything was crumbling around him now. He watched it in real-time, felt each brick fall square on his heart. _Never shirtless, sunglasses everywhere_ . How hard was it to follow? How useless _was_ he? He could see in Aziraphale’s face that the knowledge of what a monster Crowley was was dawning on him. Something white-hot began to burn at his eyes and lodge in the back of his throat. He felt like he was being torn apart. He was going to lose everything, all because of his own idiocy. He could see it unfurling before him: Aziraphale would assume the worst of him, or he would ask questions, and then he’d have no choice but to expose his true self and Aziraphale would leave. Simple as that. His vision went fuzzy. Without Aziraphale, he would have nothing. He couldn’t go back to Hell, not that he’d want to. He couldn’t befriend humans, not really, not in a way that mattered, because they’d just die after a few decades. He couldn’t stop himself from trembling at the prospect of being alone, _truly_ alone, forever. 

Acid dripped down his face, slowly at first, then all at once. He burned, again and again.

Not once, not in 6,000 years, had he ever cried in front of Aziraphale. In front of _anyone_.

The sight of those tears, inconspicuous but holding so much power, shocked Aziraphale out of his stupor. Filled with alarm, he immediately crossed the room from his couch onto Crowley’s, sitting on the small sliver of cushion Crowley had left vacant. “Crowley, dearest, no, no no no, don’t cry, please don’t cry,” he whispered, cupping Crowley’s face in his soft hands and wiping away the tears the best he could with his thumbs. He knew that crying, for demons, was incredibly painful. Their tears were holy water, the holiest of holy water, the only thing about them that didn’t become twisted after they fell. Whether it was a cruelty on God’s part or just something that _could not_ be taken from them, Aziraphale didn’t know and didn’t have time to think about. He looked Crowley in the eyes, something that had always seemed to ground his demon, calm him down. But this time, it only seemed to make things worse. 

Something was breaking inside of Crowley and Aziraphale had no idea what it was. Cautiously, he extended his empathic abilities just a bit more than usual—angels could feel emotions other than love, they just often weren’t equipped to, emotions could hurt _so much_ —and nearly started crying himself. The pain went back: far, far back, before they had met, before Crowley was Crowley. _Eons_. That was the only way to explain the depth of it, the absolute soul-crushing magnitude of it. It fell upon him in horrible waves. He nearly broke, but was experienced enough in the art of empathy that he managed to get his bearings after a moment. There was so much love buried in these feelings, too—pain caused by love, fear caused by love—love for him, and for Earth, and for the stars, and for someone who he felt didn’t love him back.

“Please, Crowley, you’re scaring me,” Aziraphale said softly, cutting off the stream of emotion and focusing again on Crowley’s face, full of terror and sadness. His gaze was unfocused, far beyond the bookstore, maybe turned inward. “Crowley. Listen to me. Can you listen to me? Listen to my voice.” He kept his tone steady despite his rising panic—could demons die by their own tears? There was smoke rising from the tracks on Crowley’s face but he didn’t seem to be in danger of melting. Aziraphale didn’t want to take a chance.

Crowley’s eyes finally swam into focus at the sound of his voice and Aziraphale nearly collapsed. “I _need_ you to stop crying,” he said, trying and failing to hide his desperation. He couldn’t lose Crowley, not so suddenly, not like this. “Breathe—in four, hold four, out four. Please. _Please_ , Crowley. Please breathe. For me.”

Aziraphale watched with bated breath as Crowley shakily obeyed. He kept Crowley’s face cupped in his hands, wiped away the tears as thoroughly as he could until the tension began to leave Crowley’s shoulders and the flow of his tears ebbed and, at last, stopped. Weak with relief, Aziraphale wrapped his arms around his demon and pulled him into a brief, but tight, hug. “Oh, Crowley,” he murmured. “You gave me quite a fright there, you...you wily old serpent. Scared me half to discorporation.”

He was surprised to find Crowley start to push him away, gentle but firm. He sat back, confused and a little hurt. Crowley did not make eye contact with him. He drew his legs up near his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He was trembling something awful and didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk. Aziraphale was, to say the least, _disquieted_ by the sight. He noticed his own hands were shaking and inconspicuously clasped them together in his lap to hide it.

They sat there for about a minute before Aziraphale couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “I’ll…” He grasped for something, anything, to say. “Well, I’ll...I suppose I’ll make us some tea now.” A nice warm cup of tea always settled the nerves, he figured. Tea with maybe something just a tad stronger, at least. But as he started to stand, Crowley made a tiny, strangled sound and said something too quiet for Aziraphale to hear.

“...Pardon, dear?”

“Don’t leave me,” he repeated, and the sheer rawness of his voice made Aziraphale freeze. Crowley uncurled himself and reached out a shivering hand to grab the hem of Aziraphale’s coat. “Don’t leave me, angel. I can’t be alone. I _can’t_.” His lower lip was trembling as much as the rest of him, and Aziraphale sat abruptly, worried Crowley would cry again. He took Crowley’s hand in both of his and squeezed gently.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, voice quieter than he’d anticipated it to be.

Crowley ducked his head and looked away. The two of them sat in a heavy silence for several languid minutes, perhaps ten, perhaps twenty, perhaps sixty. And while they sat, Aziraphale tried to process what had happened. The Crowley whose hand he did not dare let go of was not the Crowley he thought he knew. The sudden collapse, the vulnerability, the fear, the reaction to Aziraphale’s expression...he did find it odd now that he’d never seen Crowley even casually shirtless after so long in his company; the demon did, after all, seem like someone who would flaunt his body rather than hide it...the whole situation was very strange and Aziraphale didn’t like not knowing what was going on.

“I meant,” Crowley said suddenly, and Aziraphale looked over at him. His eyes were shut tightly. He looked like he was in pain. “I meant, angel, don’t _leave_ me. I can’t live without you.”

“I’d never!” Aziraphale said, shocked. “My dear, it’s not like you to think so foolishly.” He paused, brow furrowing, then took a deep breath and said, “What’s going on, Crowley? Why did you hide your scars from me?”

Crowley looked like he was about to cry again, and Aziraphale fought a new wave of panic. But then he shut his eyes tightly and hissed through his teeth in frustration. “Because I knew you would ask about them and I couldn’t...I...Aziraphale, they’re like my eyes. They raise too many questions that I don’t want to answer. And I knew that, if I _did_ answer those questions, if I answered them honestly, you would...you might not want to be around me anymore.”

“That’s...ridiculous.” Aziraphale tried his best, but couldn’t suppress a snort of derision. “A few scars won’t make me l—”

“It’s not about the scars, angel!” Crowley snapped suddenly. His eyes flew open, his face twisting into a snarl, and Aziraphale flinched away with a gasp, caught off-guard. Crowley saw this, and abruptly pulled his hand from between Aziraphale’s, crossing his arms over his chest. The anger departed from his face as quickly as it had arrived and he was left looking terribly afraid and regretful. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, angel. I’d never—I didn’t mean to—fuck. _Fuck!_ ” He ducked his head, entwining his fingers in his hair and letting his shoulders fall. He looked utterly, completely, wholly defeated. Aziraphale could not help, in this moment, noticing a long, dusky-pink wound running from the center of one shoulder all the way across Crowley’s collarbone to the center of the other shoulder. It looked deliberate and heavy, like he’d tried to cut something out of himself, make a ritual sacrifice out of his own body to appease some distant and uncaring god.

Oh.

“You did this to yourself, didn’t you?” Azirphale whispered.

Crowley nodded without looking up. He made another strangled sound. “It’s not about the scars,” he said, quiet and resigned. “It’s about the story _behind_ the scars. I didn’t want you to ask because I didn’t want you to know what I was. Am. I didn’t want you to see me in...I didn’t want you to see the real me. _I_ don’t want to see the real me. It worked for six thousand years and now, today, I ruined everything because I’m so fucking _stupid_.” A self-deprecating laugh. “Can’t get myself out of this one, can I? Crawly, the serpent, the snake, the hardest animal to fucking catch, and I can’t slither my way out of this one. Fuck.”

Aziraphale did not like any part of this, but he especially did not like hearing Crowley’s old name. He did not like hearing Crowley talk about himself like this. And he did _not_ like Crowley being so ignorant as to think that his past would preclude Aziraphale from loving him with all of his heart.

“For the record,” he began tentatively, “I find snakes rather beautiful.”

“You’re an angel,” Crowley muttered. “You’d find a garbage dump beautiful.”

Aziraphale would have retorted if it wasn’t true. He had seen a patch of daisies growing near a dump once, and _they_ had been rather beautiful. “Don’t change the subject,” he scolded instead. “I find snakes _especially_ beautiful.”

Crowley made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat.

“ _Crowley_ .” Aziraphale allowed a bit of force to enter his voice. “I want to know the story. The _full_ story. I don’t know why I didn’t ask you before what the truth was, but I have always known that it wasn’t as easy as ‘sauntering vaguely downwards’ into Hell. I’m not a fool.” Satisfied with himself, he returned to his usual softness. He wanted Crowley to know he was being wholly honest. “I love you, Crowley. And don’t give me a sarcastic line about it! I may be an angel, but my love is not, in fact, endless. And you receive the most, the very most of it. Do you understand? I will never _not_ love you. Whatever your story is, however gruesome or terrible it may be, it _will not_ change the way I feel about you. I’m...well, I’m terribly sorry you felt as though your whole self wasn’t...worthy of that love. I should have made it clearer that I don’t care who you were, only who you _are_.”

He scooted over until he was touching Crowley’s legs and leaned over until he could reach out and rest his hand on one of Crowley’s shoulders. He ran his thumb ever so gently over the scar tissue that made Crowley’s skin uneven and unique. He wished he had known sooner. He wished he had known centuries ago. “I’m sorry for my reaction,” he whispered. “I was just surprised, is all. It seemed like...a very different part of you. I’m so very sorry.”

They were both silent. Aziraphale did not withdraw his hand from Crowley’s shoulder, and Crowley didn’t move it. Aziraphale was about to speak again when Crowley suddenly said, “Raphael. That was who I was.”

Aziraphale blinked once, then twice, brow furrowing. _Raphael_...it had been an important name, he remembered that much, but…

Raphael. Archangel Raphael. The healer.

Aziraphale half-chuckled, an uncertain smile playing on his lips, but it didn’t last. “Y...you?” he said, trying to order his thoughts in a way that made sense. “ _You_ were Raphael? But he…Raphael was…”

“Different.” Crowley lifted his head. There was so much pain in his voice, in his eyes, in the set of his jaw. He looked like he might cry again, and Aziraphale’s heart snagged on a hook of fear at the thought. “A cautionary tale. The first to Fall.”

Aziraphale didn’t think about Heaven-before-Earth much. Principalities were not and had never been important, and he’d been an _especially_ unimportant one. Back then, Archangels limited their interaction with the lower classes, but Raphael had been...had been...an exception. Strange but kind, modest when the others were proud. He’d been disliked by most, probably because they were jealous. There had been one occasion when Aziraphale and Raphael had interacted, briefly. He couldn’t remember the reason or the details but he remembered a feeling and a face. Raphael had exuded warmth and compassion, been constantly surrounded by light and love. He’d given himself raven-dark hair and gentle green eyes—and he’d been the first angel to craft himself a human form.

He’d been the first in so many things.

Crowley had the same nose, the same tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve (or in his expression). But the warmth, the light…

Aziraphale recalled the love that underlied every emotion Crowley felt, the love that permeated every room Crowley ever entered. Crowley had proven himself to be gentle. He had proven himself to be kind. Heaven’s sake, he’d fallen in love with a being _made of_ love.

He’d held a Bentley together with nothing but his willpower. Mended dents with a stare. Picked Aziraphale up and dusted him off countless times over the centuries. He held a deep concern for children, had secretly pledged to himself never to do real harm to anyone or anything if it could ever be avoided.

Raphael. Archangel. Healer. Of _course_.

“Unbelievable.” There was awe in Aziraphale’s whisper.

Crowley’s expression suddenly grew complicated and forlorn. He didn’t like the way Aziraphale was looking at him, like cherubs had sprung up and were singing holy hymns around him. It wasn’t natural.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Crowley said, allowing just a little venom to enter his voice. “You’re talking like I’m some sort of king. I’m not Raphael anymore. I don’t know exactly who I am _instead_ , not yet, but I know—angel, I _know_ I’m not an Archangel. So...so please, Aziraphale, don’t. Don’t ever do that again.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened and his face grew a shade or two pinker. “Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t even know I was doing it. I just never…” He ducked his head briefly, shame written in his expression, and it made Crowley feel very strange. Aziraphale then looked back up at him, almost cautiously, his gaze earnest and complex. “So you’ve told me your name. Your old name,” he said. “But, Crowley, I still don’t know your whole story. I want to know it. I want to know _you_.”

He reached out and tenderly clasped Crowley’s hands in his once again. Crowley looked down them and set about committing every detail to memory: the reassuring weight of Aziraphale’s palms in his, the warmth of his skin, the slight roughness of his knuckles, Crowley’s perfectly-manicured, black-painted nails in contrast with Aziraphale’s, cut and nothing else.

Crowley sighed. It was a long sigh, a tired sigh, directed simultaneously at nobody in particular and at the entire Universe, above and below and between.

“Okay,” he said, scarcely a whisper. “For you, angel.”

Sometimes Aziraphale would feel something so strongly that everyone within a ten-foot radius would suddenly develop mild empathic abilities. This was one of those times. _I love you and that love is undying_ said the feeling, and Crowley had to fight hard against a new burning in his throat. He squeezed Aziraphale’s hands, to reassure himself, to ground himself. He swallowed once. And then he began.


	2. Anathema

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another warning: this chapter contains fairly graphic descriptions of self-harm, physical and emotional pain, and severe injury/disfigurement.
> 
> Please read with caution if these things are distressing to you!

* * *

**Anathema,** _Greek_ : something/someone vehemently disliked; a formal excommunication, ban, or curse, particularly in the context of the Church.

* * *

The details of his life in Heaven were buried under layers of carefully-placed sediment, and it took him a few tries to dredge up reliable ones. Aziraphale nodded helpfully when he described things that sounded familiar or which hadn’t changed. And most of it, he soon found, _hadn’t_ changed.

What he remembered were blindingly-white walls and permanent pastel sunsets. He remembered mutable forms and notions of beauty which constantly shifted. Try as they might to deny it, angels have always been vain and proud, proud even before there was anything in the Universe below them to be prouder than.

Perhaps this was where he’d started to go wrong.

Raphael the Archangel was not particularly vain, nor was he especially proud. God had endowed all angels with the ability to choose what they looked like, and many ran absolutely wild with it. Thousand-eyed wheels of flame and color were popular. Indescribable beings with curling golden horns and shifting patterns adorning their light-flesh were a close second. Often, Raphael could not recognize his colleagues from day to celestial day, as they changed forms on a whim to keep up good appearances. But Raphael—he was simple. His form had never been showy or elaborate, neither beautiful nor ugly. He changed it once every ten thousand years or so, just because. But it was always such a _pain_.

The others were, nonetheless, jealous of him. He knew this. God absolutely played favorites, particularly amongst Her angels, and he was one of the lucky few. Ever since he’d been created, God had seemed to take a particular liking to him. She invited him to hover by Her metaphorical shoulder as She thought and created, asked him to give his input on Her designs. She instructed him to design the stars. He never flaunted or bragged about his closeness to the Almighty, but even so, those around him hated him quite ferociously for his esteemed position. He tried to ignore it, tried to make himself as dull and unnoticeable as possible, but in Heaven a form that wasn’t flashy was just _asking_ for attention. 

Raphael did not have friends, but he was friendly to everyone he interacted with. He pretended not to notice their sneers.

One day God had called him to speak with Her privately and had run past him the design for a new creature made of mud and muscle. _Man,_ She called it, and Raphael had been enamored, so much so that he sculpted a face for himself, narrow-nosed and gentle-eyed. Green was a new color he liked very much, the color of what God was thinking of calling “flora.” He gave himself eyes that shifted in the light from the pale green of a fog-clad valley to the deep and unfathomable jade of a forest bough. For hair he chose the color black, as it reminded him of everything Heaven was not, and it made him think of the starry abyss that had started to feel like home to him. The form fit him in a way that the eldritch creations of the other angels never had.

The other angels were disgusted by it, naturally. Never before had they seen anything so hideous and confined, so utterly lacking in raw celestial power. But God praised him for his mimicry of Her design, and the others loathed him even more. He still cared little—pretended to care little—for their thoughts and their changeable ways. They never dared try to force him into a proper form or disrespect him directly; to do so would be to spit in the face of God Herself. There would surely be vengeance if they acted against Raphael, the Golden Child, and they seethed. To them, he was untouchable.

Allegedly.

He was never sure when exactly his questions began to leave a bitter taste on God’s tongue. He thought, in his darker moments, that perhaps one day the Archangel Gabriel had told God some false and unsavory things about him to get rid of him, and the whole “asking too many questions” thing had never been the case at all. Perhaps the reason he had been created was to Fall first, and God had just been toying with him to pass the time until he was ready. Truth was, he’d never been told why exactly the whole thing started, why he’d been booted out. As far as he knew, God loved him. She had never shown any signs of feeling otherwise. 

But God, he’d learned, could be fickle.

Over the years, Crowley assembled the usual answers to the question of his Falling from multiple half-truths. “I hung around the wrong people”—he was acquaintances with Lucifer, sure, they got along okay, both were liked by God and not exactly beloved by their fellow angels, but he didn’t “hang around” anybody particularly unsavory. He certainly wasn’t a cohort or confidante of the Morningstar, never had been, never would be. And Hastur and Ligur and Beelzebub hated him well before they joined him in the Fun Pit. “I asked too many questions”—he was curious by nature, wanted to know the whys and hows and wheres and whens, and God had never discouraged him from asking Her whatever he wanted. As a matter of fact, She’d encouraged it, which is what made it hurt even more. He could never decide if She had deliberately lured him into a position where he could be accused of doing wrong or if he’d really, genuinely done something _that_ evil. If opening his mouth to speak was the sin.

The War between Heaven and what would later be known as Hell began immediately after Raphael Fell, which made him certain that it had been part of the Great Plan. Of course, the War wasn’t started for stupid reasons. Some of the angels were genuinely Bad and stirred up Trouble. It was a whole convoluted, murky mess which Raphael—and later Crowley—would never care enough about to unpack fully. All he was ever sure about regarding the War was that someone had decided to make an example of him for reasons unbeknownst to him, that he’d been the trigger for the division of good and evil.

It could have been Lucifer, rallying his troops. A setup meant to showcase how evil Heaven could be.

It could have been Gabriel, rallying _his_ troops. A setup meant to showcase just what defiance against the holy could do to you.

It could have been God, tired of waiting for the War to start and taking matters into Her own hands.

Or maybe it had just been his fault all along.

There was no fanfare about it. No papers were served, he didn’t have time to pack his bags. He was just minding his own business when, in a matter of seconds, without warning, Raphael, the archangel, The Healer, was cast out of Heaven by forces unknown. The original pariah. The angel who’d chosen a form of blood and bone over light and air.

He fell for quite a while. The Earth was freshly-minted, the sky and land recently divided by loving hands. A few rudimentary animals had been created. There was no Hell yet, wouldn’t be for quite some time. That was okay. The ground was low enough.

At first he wasn’t quite sure what was happening. He’d felt vertigo, an odd feeling for an angel, tried to get his bearings and suddenly slipped off a ledge that wasn’t there. There was no hole in the sky, no sign of Heaven at all, really. It was sunny. It was blue. He was above the clouds, and then he wasn’t. It was completely, utterly silent. He was confused, but not afraid. Recently, perhaps in preparation for the War, God had granted him and the other archangels what She called wings, regal things whose longest feathers touched the ground delicately, whiter than teeth and lighter than air. Raphael had loved his when he’d received them, thought they fit just so on his shoulders. Only two wings fit on him, but two was enough. He was simple. He was satisfied. He was never _not_ satisfied.

So surely this was a mistake. He was not liked but he was not hated. He was the Healer, he was an Archangel, God loved him. God would protect him. Surely his wings would unfurl any second now and cup the never-breathed air in their lightness, buoy him up, and he could find his way home.

God loved him. God loved him. God loved him. It was just a mistake. Someone had pushed a button they weren’t supposed to. That pain was a mistake, surely. The pain that was slowly, steadily, rending flesh from bone was a mistake. The first fire, the first flames, stealing his wings from him, disfiguring the body he’d taken such care in crafting—all a mistake, all misplaced paperwork, of course. God would stop this, She would. He knew it. His faith was strong. She loved him. He was Her favorite. He was Her Healer. This wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be.

But he couldn’t stop the scream from leaving his lips. He was being torn asunder. No being before him had ever felt pain. No being before him had ever felt helpless. The pain was white-hot, searing, whiter than the halls of Heaven, whiter than the holy light which bathed the better forms of his fellow angels, whiter than the feathers he loved so much. Something was being ripped from him, sought out in every tendon, every fiber, every strand of hair and bead of sweat and taken and discarded. Who was doing this to him? What had he done?

“I’m sorry,” he tried to say but the words couldn’t find themselves in his throat and suddenly he landed and the Earth was no longer perfect. His bones, the ones God had praised him for, carved from calcium and stone, shattered. His wings felt...his wings felt...gone. Not gone, but dead, detached, needing amputation. He wanted to reach around and snap them off of himself but he couldn’t move, tried to command his body to heal but he couldn’t move.

His form hadn’t _truly_ been physical in Heaven. It had straddled a line between the metaphysical and the physical, at once solid and not. But something had changed upon his landing, and changed permanently.

_Permanence_ was not really a concept in Heaven. There was always the option of change, the ability to choose when one was tired of the way things were and to alter them as they saw fit. But Raphael now occupied uncharted waters. He no longer had a choice.

And yet, he soon found himself changing despite his desire not to. His screams did nothing to stop it, his pleads, his laments. Confused, afraid, in pain so ferocious it tore at his very soul, he writhed and sobbed and prayed to deaf ears.

His tears fell onto the new soil and gave it richness. Where they landed, flowers grew and blossomed, trees took root, reeds began to sing in the sweet breeze.

The first snake was not created by God, but it _was_ cursed.

The War began in earnest, and other angels Fell soon after Raphael. The Creation was postponed. God seemed unhappy. Dark clouds piled upon themselves in the sky, lightning flashed, but no rain came. Not yet.

Lucifer was second to Fall, the true instigator of the War, then Beelzebub followed, then the rest. They did not try to find Raphael on the ground; he had not been one of them and they wouldn’t have recognized him had they stumbled upon him anyway.

He did not stay in place after he landed. He laid there for a good few hours, of course, reordering his thoughts and trying to adjust to the strange and frightening situation he found himself in. Eventually he decided it would be better to move than to stay where he’d Fallen. The world was new and vast, after all, the topography constantly changing, and there was much to see. What had been flatlands one day was mountains the next; what had been deserts became seas. God was restless.

The first days were hard. He found himself shifting forms with the cycle of the sun, and his tears never ceased, no matter if he was serpent or man. They burned something fierce; they were constant needles in his flesh, reminders of his new...predicament. Raphael traveled for two days, almost without stopping. He hurt in a way that nothing had ever hurt before. Occasionally he would come across what had once been an angel writhing, crawling, screaming, sobbing in the mud, as broken and bloodied as he had been, and he would regard them unseen from the grass for a long while before he chose to move on. He didn’t know what exactly was going on up there, but seeing its casualties treated so cruelly made him feel Some Type Of Way, a way which made his stomach twist.

At first, he was afraid that he’d be trapped in this twisted, unfamiliar, scaly shape for the rest of eternity, but as the sun set on his first day his soft-skinned body returned to him and he was able to dig his fingers into the cool earth, flex his toes in the sand. He crouched like a beast under the shelter of a new tree, soil smeared across his flesh, staring up at wherever the worsening clouds had parted and he could see the stars. His stars.

He pictured himself up there in the sky, hanging the stars on delicate strings. His shoulders ached where his wings hung lifeless on his back.

When the first rays of morning light shone on the second day, he was terrified to find his form once again stolen from him. His tears were plentiful and painful and for a while he stayed coiled on the ground beneath the tree, mostly hidden in clumps of marigold and rainflower and wormwood that had sprung up wherever the tears fell. The morning stretched out into the afternoon and he didn’t move. But as the light began to dim he decided he wasn’t going to wait for his body to be returned to him and tried willing himself into it, imagining his legs and feet and hands and arms and hair, and suddenly, astonishingly, there they were.

Raphael learned, in that moment, the power of imagination.

He walked through the night, stopping every so often to stare upwards until his neck ached. The darkness would occasionally be broken by angels who fell like distant pearls, scouring the night sky with streaks of flame. He passed other things in the muck as he traveled, things that crawled and buzzed and croaked and hissed, and wondered how many were casualties and how many were truly just God’s creatures.

He wished he could help. He wished he knew what exactly was going on.

When his legs couldn’t carry him any further, when he was on the verge of collapsing, he steeled himself against a wave of revulsion and imagined himself once again as a serpent. So a serpent he became, and he continued on, aimless and growing more numb by the hour. Back and forth he went for five full days, switching bodies (however much it disgusted him to do so) whenever one grew too weak to continue. He didn’t eat. He didn’t drink. He didn’t sleep.

He stopped looking up at the night sky.

On his sixth day of wandering, as the War above him reached a crescendo, Raphael found a sword.

He’d found himself in a field of waist-high wheatgrass, open and alone. He wasn’t sure how far he had come from where he’d begun; landmarks were few and far between. What had made him stop was a wing, clearly broken, its feathers ruffling gently in the breeze, sticking up above the grass. It was white, and Raphael felt a sourness start to rise in his throat as he looked at it. He had not yet seen the remnants of his own wings yet and he did not want to.

His curious nature overtook him as he stared and so he moved towards the body only to find what looked like a Principality, groaning and broken, lying on its side in the dirt. Raphael blinked stupidly at it. It was...alive, obviously, because it was moving. But he’d grown so used to seeing the _remnants_ of angels down here, twisted beyond recognition in a punishment far worse than discorporation or death, that it took him a second to process the scene. This angel hadn’t Fallen, it had just...fallen.

A scorch-mark and a blackened corpse scarred the ground a few feet away from the struggling Principality. Raphael regarded this with as much detachment as he could muster. A part of him feared that if he were to start crying again he wouldn’t ever recover, and he was getting dangerously close to that threshold. So he swallowed any emotions that were threatening to crawl out of him and turned his attention back to the Principality, taking a few delicate steps towards it. Just to inspect.

A glint in the grass caught his eye as he moved. He stooped and his fingers brushed the hilt of a sword, its blade dirty but intact. It burned him ever so slightly when he touched it, but he managed to curl his fingers around it without much issue and he lifted it up to look at it.

He’d never held a sword before, barely even seen one since, after all, they’d been created for the War and he was trying his best not to participate in that. He’d caught glimpses of them in the sky, though, ferocious-looking things of lightning and thunder and flame wielded by angels and...well, by the others like him. The not-angels.

The demons.

The sword in his hands was remarkably simple for a holy weapon. No elaborate decorations or holy embellishments on it, just a golden hilt and an iron blade stained with something dark and viscous. He blinked and the metal miraculously cleaned itself. Thunder rumbled overhead as he looked it over. The Principality whimpered in the dirt.

Raphael kept the sword in his hand as he slowly circled the Principality, stopping when he was facing its front. The poor thing looked newly-created. Its flesh was a deep ebony but it still seemed to glow, emanating a holy light from within. Its feathers were a glorious alabaster white, its wings magnificent despite the fact that they were bent in a way that wings should never bend. It looked hideously out of place among the muck of Earth.

It was crying softly even before Raphael made his presence known. But when his feet came into view, the Principality ceased all movement, its breath seemingly trapped between its ribs and throat. Raphael began to feel a feeling that he wasn’t so sure he wanted to feel as the Principality slowly, heavily, lifted its head to look up at him. Its eyes were breathtaking, wide and golden-lilac and glistening. For a moment, they just stared at each other, neither knowing quite what to do. The world was still and quiet.

Then the Principality let out an ugly, tearing sob and tried to scramble away from him, its wings twitching haphazardly, fingers digging in the soil. It tried lifting itself to its feet, but its body was far too broken to stand. Raphael just stood motionless as the Principality attempted everything in its power to escape. It was afraid of him. Terrified. This was the first time anyone had ever reacted to his presence in such a manner, and he absentmindedly raised a hand to his cheek, brushing the skin with his fingertips. He wondered dimly what exactly he’d become.

Raphael watched the Principality struggle for a few moments more until it gave up and collapsed. It tried mustering as much courage as it could to fix him in a fiery, albeit tear-filled, glare. A distant part of Raphael was impressed.

“F-foul fiend,” the Principality choked out. “Try and kill me if you w-wish. God will protect me. God w-will avenge me!”

It said that more like it wanted to convince itself rather than threaten Raphael.

Raphael took a few steps forward and the Principality, try as it might, couldn’t resist flinching away. Its eyes flicked from the sword in his hand to his face, clearly terrified. Raphael crouched before it, expressionless even though he felt himself crumbling inside.

He took a moment to survey the damage. He hadn’t realized how easily these bodies could break. The fall must have been just awful; the time after must have been worse. It was wounded too badly to heal itself, but not badly enough to be discorporated. It was stuck.

Raphael glanced down at the sword in his hand. There were three options. If he left the Principality here, something else was sure to come along eventually—something probably much uglier than himself. He could end the Principality’s suffering as quickly as possible with its own sword—a holy weapon such as this would most likely kill it wholly rather than lead to a simple discorporation, but at least it wouldn’t be in pain. Or he could do what he’d always done, give care and healing, and the Principality might overpower him and take the sword back and behead him, which didn’t sound like such a bad outcome, really.

Of course, his gift might not even work anymore. But he figured it was worth a try.

“No bones broken,” he said as flatly as he could, and waved his free hand over the Principality’s body. Lo and behold, the angel’s body began to mend itself. This knowledge filled Raphael with a complicated emotion, both good and bad. Part of him was relieved that he wouldn’t have to kill it with its own sword. Part of him was filled with boiling rage that he had been left with this piece of himself, of all things. And part of him felt nothing at all.

The Principality, shocked and speechless, blinked up at him.

Its mouth gaped dumbly.

“Wh…” Its voice was strangled. “What _are_ you?”

Raphael didn’t answer. He _couldn’t_ , because he didn’t know what to say. For the past six days, he’d been clinging to the delusion that he was still himself, that it had all been some terrible mistake and soon enough someone would bring him home. It was almost, _almost_ true—Raphael the Archangel still lived inside him, enough to allow him to use his gift for healing. But he was becoming something else at the same time.

There were two people warring with each other inside his head—an angel and something frightening and new and unknown—and it was starting to get very, very noisy inside his skull.

The angel hadn’t recognized him; he hadn’t known what he’d expected. The sword was suddenly heavy, immeasurably heavy, in Raphael’s hand, and all at once he got a terrible urge to run it through himself and end this. He knelt, silent, staring unfocused into a middle distance, as the Principality decided not to wait around for an answer and scrabble to its feet. A flailing of limbs, a realigning of wings, a gust of wind, and it was gone.

Raphael, after what seemed like quite a while, resumed his aimless wandering. There was a hollowness inside his chest now that had not exactly been there before. He turned his thoughts around in his mind and the sword around in his palm as he walked: how much had he really been deformed? Images of a horrid beast, worse with every new iteration, flew before his eyes. He knew already that his body had been stolen from him and replaced with one that changed forms on its own whim into some grotesque, scaled monster. But what had happened to his face? Were his eyes still the green he’d loved so much? Was his smile still gentle? Or had his entire self been taken from him?

The day stretched into the night, and the storm clouds roiled in the sky above him. His emotions kept mounting inside him regardless of his attempts to try and stop their flow; he felt his throat and eyes burn as the threat of tears rose. He could feel himself spiralling downwards, dragging himself into a pit that would be nearly impossible to escape from, and he couldn’t stop it. He was, it seemed, destined to fall, again and again and again.

He hadn’t expected to be the War’s first casualty. Things had been tense in the days leading up to his exile: Lucifer had stirred things up one too many times and Gabriel and the other Archangels were growing sick of it. Raphael wasn’t invested in either side, would have remained neutral through the whole thing if it had been an option.

He was the Healer. He didn’t _have_ a side. This had been chosen for him.

He thought about the Principality he’d seen. He thought about the other shattered bodies he’d come across. And suddenly it hit him: every single one of him had looked like him, like God’s newest invention. Fragile bones supporting muscle and blood and skin. He’d been scorned for his choice of form, and now every angel and demon he saw occupied one similar to it. God must have forced them into it. She was preparing for something new, after all. Was this whole War just a prologue to some story She was writing for Her own amusement?

Had She never really loved him?

A coldness washed over his whole body. He moved his hands without really thinking about it.

His throat burned as he lifted the blade of the sword to his face and examined his reflection in the fading light.

He could only see his face in parts. A piece here, a piece there, the blade wasn’t wide enough to capture his entire image in one go. But it was enough.

His eyes. Those were what he saw first.

Raphael had taken so much care in crafting them, knew every whorl and fleck of color in them. His eyes, he felt, were what made him _him_. They spoke for him in a way his words alone could not. They were his, made by his hand and his hand alone. And they had been stolen from him.

They looked almost comedic, like they’d been grafted onto his face by someone with a twisted sense of humor. Deep red at the edges fading to a sickly sulfuric yellow around horrible slitted pupils. They were the eyes of an animal. They were the eyes of a predator. _They_ were what had caused that Principality to shrink from him in fear. One look at those eyes, and anyone would know what he was, that he couldn’t be trusted, that he was a beast that needed slaying. He was a monster. The thought wouldn’t leave his mind. Every breath was a knife slicing through him, gutting him. Every tear brought fresh, sharp pain to his flesh.

He could, he supposed, tolerate a changing form. He could tolerate being alone. He could tolerate a fate of endless wandering, endless uncertainty. If that was his destiny, then so be it: he’d still know, after everything, deep in his heart, that he was Raphael. But this... _this_ was almost nonsensical in its cruelty. He felt, once again, as though he were falling, as though the ground beneath his feet was slipping. He’d held onto some shred of faith that his eyes, the windows to his soul, the essence of his self, had remained unsullied by his tumble. A small mercy bestowed upon him by the Almighty. It took all of his strength not to drop the sword, to stare at his reflection until the image of what he had become—what had been done to him—what he used to be—had firmly burned itself into his mind and his heart. The wind picked up around him, whipping the tall grasses into a flurry around his legs. The clouds continued mounting in the distance. There was a smell on the horizon, strange and clean and crisp, the scent of foreboding, the scent of change and Change-with-a-capital-C.

In this moment, God created the Garden.

Raphael’s vision blurred and burned. He cried out as his tears fell with a fervor, like they were desperate to join the earth below his bare feet. The drops that made it from his chin to the soil immediately sprouted into pink carnations and sweetbriar roses and dandelions and rue. He clasped one hand to his eyes and stumbled with the pain, wiping frantically, but the tears just kept coming and he dropped to his knees among the flowers, unable to see, unable to breathe, unable to think past the image of those terrible eyes, _his_ eyes.

It was too much. It was all just too much. He collapsed.

He flung his face, his awful, broken, monstrous face, to the sky, which seemed like it was waiting for something.

“What do you _want_ ?” he screamed. He was hurting inside and he was hurting outside and he had been hurting, really, for far longer than six days. “What do you want from me, really? Did I ever mean anything to you? Did any of us ever mean _anything_ to you?!”

The sword burned in his hand, but it was an eager burn, like it was coaxing him to do something. Like it was giving him a little nudge.

“This body—I made it just for you! To show you how much I loved you!” His voice was raw, choked and deformed by his sobs. “What did it mean? What the _fuck_ did it mean, in the end?!” A sardonic laugh, mocking himself, mocking God, mocking Lucifer, mocking Gabriel. “I thought I was special! But now everyone’s got one, haven’t they? Everyone’s _fucking_ got one!!” It was one of them that did this. One of the four. The lines between them all started to blur as much as his vision had. The clouds above him were smears of gray. “You took my eyes from me!” he roared. “You took my fucking _eyes_ ! You made me turn into some—some—one of your failed fucking ideas! You took my fucking _wings_ !! But you can’t take _this_ from me, asshole!!”

He brandished the sword to the heavens, and the heavens were silent in response. The wind howled around his ears but he could barely hear it. Raphael the Archangel had lost everything, and finally he had begun to lose his mind.

“You see this? You think you’re keeping me from changing myself? Think again, fucker!! Try taking _this_ from me!”

And he pressed the tip of the blade into the flesh of his shoulder and drew a deep, shaky, jagged line across the entirety of his chest.

This pain bloomed before him just as the flowers had. Whatever he was going to shout next caught in his throat as blood, red as his eyes, red as a rose, blossomed from the wound and splattered onto the petals of the flowers beneath him. This was a sacrifice; he wasn’t sure to whom. But it felt fucking _good_ to be in control of his pain. To be in control of his fate.

His own hand drew these incisions, not the hand of God, nor the hand of the Devil. Some were deeper than others. They healed almost immediately, leaving shiny streaks of dusky pink scar tissue, and he liked the way his body kept the receipts of its injuries. They healed almost immediately but the blood that he did spill rebooted his system. He was cutting out his old self, ridding himself of whatever in him had been holy, whatever in him had been unholy. He did not choose sides and this did not help him to choose sides. Each drop of blood was a drop of who he had been, a piece of Raphael that he was discarding. He was not God’s favorite. Perhaps he never had been. He was not an Archangel anymore, he did not belong to Heaven, and he certainly did not belong to the Earth or the things below the Earth. He belonged to himself; this made it so. He stayed there for hours, marking himself with his wounds, reclaiming himself. Thunder, like God gossiping, murmured overhead.

He chose the name Crawly because it felt good on his tongue and because he was no longer ashamed of being one of the things that crawled in the dirt.

When he finished marring himself, he left the sword sitting, bloodied, amongst the flowers that had sprung from his tears. It was never seen again.

In this moment, God created man, and it was good.


	3. Pragma

* * *

**Pragma,** _Greek_ : a fairly modern update on the ancient Greek types of love; enduring, long-lasting love that results from patience, tolerance, and effort from all parties.

* * *

Aziraphale hadn’t been a soldier in the War.

He’d done clerical work, tried to stay out of trouble. He’d heard about Raphael's fate secondhand and had watched others—his friends, some of them, most of them—Fall before his eyes. The thought of it, even now, sent a shudder slithering along his spine. The fear in their faces, the hopelessness, the desperation...an image appeared unbidden in his mind, of Crowley reaching for him as the ground opened up to swallow him whole one last time, his beautiful serpentine eyes wide and terrified, Aziraphale crying out his name one last time, unable to do anything to stop his return to Hell.

Aziraphale blinked and he was back in his bookshop. He shooed the distressing image from his mind as briskly as he could. It wasn’t real. They were safe, for now. They were home. As long as they had each other, they were home.

Crowley’s story took quite a while to tell. He’d had to stop a few times to collect himself or to answer Aziraphale’s questions. It had started to rain in the middle of it. At some point, he and Crowley had rearranged themselves on the couch so that Aziraphale was holding him as he spoke. A few times Aziraphale thought he’d seen tears glisten in those eyes he loved so very much and he was prepared to dry them as quickly as angelically possible, but Crowley didn’t let himself cry again, because he knew now that it made Aziraphale afraid. And he couldn’t let his angel be afraid for him. Not again.

Aziraphale nearly felt like crying himself at times, but he didn’t dare, because it would have killed Crowley—of this, he was sure. He was mad at himself for not knowing any of Crowley’s history before, for never asking, for going along with his little game of pretending to be okay. The ending had shaken him. He’d never imagined Crowley capable of hurting anyone, really, least of all himself, and the thought of him all alone in a field carving lines into his flesh made his heart skip a beat in the worst way possible.

His grip on Crowley’s shoulders must have been tightening by now, because Crowley reached a gentle hand around and touched one of Aziraphale’s wrists, ever so softly. He looked at his angel out of the corner of his eye and tried to smile.

“The story has a happy ending,” he said quietly.

“Oh?” Aziraphale’s voice trembled, and he cleared his throat. Crowley, ever the saint, pretended not to notice. He just nodded and let out a soft “mm-hm” before he continued his story. He drew small circles on the inside of Aziraphale’s wrist with his thumb as he spoke and Aziraphale had never felt so much love.

“I stumbled across the Garden on the ninth day,” Crowley said. Barely a murmur, but Aziraphale could hear him clear as day. “And I didn’t know what to think. Before then I’d only seen frogs and toads and lizards and bugs, but in the Garden, there was so much newness and so much beauty. A lot of it God had shown me, but a lot of it was new. The War wasn’t...I don’t think it was over yet, but close. I didn’t want to attract a lot of attention to myself and there were enough brand-new animals around that I figured I’d get away with it, so...I took my snake form and explored for a while. God must have known I was there. Of course She did. But She never did anything about it and I didn’t do anything to provoke Her. She and I weren’t really on speaking terms anymore, anyway.

“I didn’t join Hell until after, see. And I never really ‘joined.’ More like I did freelance work and kind of...checked in sometimes.” Crowley blinked, thoughtfully, sadly. “I didn’t know they weren’t supposed to eat from that tree. I didn’t get the memo. I knew it was _some_ kind of interesting fruit but I didn’t know it was _forbidden_ . You know this part.” He shook his head, as though to clear it. “I tempted, on accident, and Hell saw, and they were all, ‘Oh, good job, bloody fantastic, the first sinner! Come work for us,’ and I was like, well, I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have many options. You know how this goes. They didn’t know who I’d been and I didn’t tell them. I was nobody to them but Crawly the Serpent. My point is—Aziraphale—angel, I saw you before I tempted anyone. I saw you, not Fallen, not falling, just, sitting there by the Eastern Gate, and I felt _pulled_ to you, like I had to speak to you. Honestly, I should have gotten out of there right after the temptation thing happened, but I couldn’t leave without saying hi to you.”

“I saw you too,” Aziraphale mused, “but I didn’t think too hard about your being there. It seemed natural enough. I left you an _orange_ once, I remember.”

Crowley laughed despite himself. “I remember that! Weird gift for a snake.”

Aziraphale smiled warmly. “At the time, it seemed perfect.”

Crowley sighed, closing his eyes and leaning back so that his head rested against Aziraphale’s chest. “You know, the first time it ever rained was right after I talked to you,” he said thoughtfully. “It had been building and building and building for a week and then suddenly...there it was. Not a bad storm, too, was it? Kind of like today.”

“Almost like it had been waiting for you to make a move,” Aziraphale said, half-teasing.

“Maybe, angel,” Crowley said. “Maybe.”

What was left unspoken was that Crowley had come to the realization that maybe his aimless wanderings hadn’t been so aimless, after all. Maybe he’d been walking towards an angel— _his_ angel—all along. Maybe things _did_ happen for a reason. Maybe he shouldn’t have waited so long for any of it.

He had hurt so much in those early days and kept hurting for thousands of years after. But now, in this moment, with this angel, all of his pain seemed like a dream he could barely remember.

“Aziraphale?” he said.

“Yes, dear?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Crowley. More than anything.”

The way Aziraphale touched Crowley’s scars, gently, knowingly, carefully, conveyed a hundred thousand things his words never could.

“I wish I’d told you sooner,” Crowley whispered.

“So do I. But now you have, and that’s all that matters.” A soft kiss on the top of Crowley’s head.

There were a million things Crowley could have said. A million different things he could have done. But the rain and Aziraphale’s warmth and the sudden exhaustion from talking for so long about something still so tender led to a wave of fatigue. He could stay here for 6,000 years and be happy.

“Aziraphale,” he said, truly relaxing for the first time since Creation itself.

“Yes, dear.” He could hear the smile in Aziraphale’s voice.

“It was the tastiest orange I’ve ever eaten.”

Aziraphale’s heart felt unbelievably warm. “I could find you a better one,” he said. “There’s a lovely farmer’s market tomorrow. I’ll buy you the best orange I can find. It’ll be perfect.”

“Angel,” Crowley said, closing his eyes, “anything you touch is perfect.”

Aziraphale bent his head and kissed the scar that ran along Crowley’s collarbone. Their fingers were intertwined. The rain fell gently on the windowsills.

“Then I’ll be sure never to let go of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this far!!
> 
> I wasn't expecting this fic to get this long, but I'm pleased with the end result!
> 
> BIG BIG GIGANTIC TREMENDOUS thank-you's to Jaques for the editing and suggestions and @crowleyfucks on Tumblr for being as enthusiastic about this thing as I was!
> 
> Also thank you to Nue for tolerating my word count updates for a week at ungodly hours of the morning and for allowing me to get him into Good Omens. u da bestest of the best as always <3
> 
> ALSO, thank you to @retrouvel for providing a platform for headcanons about burning demon tears and fallen Archangels. You're doing God's work.
> 
> Comments are always read and treasured :)
> 
> If you’d like, check out my Instagram (@junebvgg) and/or Tumblr (@junee-bee)!
> 
> (One last note: the title of this fic is inspired by the song 'Saint Bernard' by Lincoln.)
> 
> <3


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